RMD & Inherited IRA Calculator

The RMD calculation itself is simple. The complexity lies in choosing the right table and knowing which balance to use.

The basic formula:

RMD = Account Balance (Dec 31 of prior year) / Distribution Period (from IRS table)

The IRS provides three life expectancy tables, and which one you use depends on your situation:

• Uniform Lifetime Table — Used by most IRA owners. This is the default table and produces the smallest RMD (longest distribution period). It assumes a beneficiary exactly 10 years younger than you, regardless of your actual beneficiary.
• Joint Life and Last Survivor Table — Used only when your sole beneficiary is a spouse who is more than 10 years younger. This table produces an even longer distribution period (smaller RMD), because the joint life expectancy of a couple with a large age gap is longer.
• Single Life Expectancy Table — Used by beneficiaries of inherited IRAs (when annual RMDs apply). This table produces shorter distribution periods and larger required withdrawals.

Example calculation: You're 75 years old and your traditional IRA balance on December 31 of last year was $500,000. The Uniform Lifetime Table shows a distribution period of 24.6 for age 75. Your RMD is $500,000 / 24.6 = $20,325.

Important details:

• You can always withdraw more than the RMD. The minimum is a floor, not a ceiling.
• You cannot carry over excess withdrawals to reduce future RMDs. Each year is calculated independently.
• If you have multiple traditional IRAs, you calculate the RMD for each account separately but can take the total from any one or combination of your traditional IRAs. The same aggregation rule applies to 403(b) accounts. However, 401(k) RMDs must be taken from each individual 401(k).
• The IRS updated all three tables in 2022 (effective for 2022 RMDs). The new tables reflect longer life expectancies, which means slightly smaller RMDs than under the old tables.

The SECURE Act (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act, signed December 2019) fundamentally changed the rules for inherited IRAs. Before SECURE, any beneficiary could "stretch" distributions from an inherited IRA over their own life expectancy — sometimes 40-50+ years. The SECURE Act replaced this with a 10-year depletion rule for most non-spouse beneficiaries.

The 10-year rule means: Most non-spouse beneficiaries who inherit an IRA from someone who died on or after January 1, 2020 must withdraw the entire account balance by December 31 of the 10th year following the year of the original owner's death. The account must be fully emptied by that deadline.

The critical 2024 update — annual RMDs within the 10 years:

After years of confusion and multiple proposed regulations, the IRS finalized rules in July 2024 confirming that if the original owner died on or after their required beginning date (i.e., they were already taking or should have been taking RMDs), then the beneficiary must take annual RMDs in years 1–9 based on the Single Life Expectancy Table, and then withdraw the remaining balance in year 10.

If the owner died before their required beginning date, no annual RMDs are required — you just need to empty the account by the end of year 10. You can take it all in year 10, spread it evenly, front-load it, or use any pattern you choose.

Note on penalties during the transition period: The IRS waived the penalty for missed annual RMDs for inherited IRAs for the years 2021–2024 while the rules were being finalized. Starting in 2025, the penalty applies. Beneficiaries who have been waiting should start catching up.

Not everyone is subject to the 10-year rule. The SECURE Act created a special category called eligible designated beneficiaries (EDBs) who can still use the old "stretch" IRA rules and take distributions over their own life expectancy.

The five categories of EDBs:

• Surviving spouses — The most common EDB. Spouses have the most flexibility: they can treat the inherited IRA as their own, roll it into their own IRA, or remain as a beneficiary. Starting in 2024, surviving spouses can also elect to be treated as the deceased for RMD purposes (using the deceased's age from the Uniform Lifetime Table), which can produce smaller RMDs if the deceased was younger.
• Minor children of the deceased — Only the decedent's own children (not grandchildren). They can stretch RMDs over their life expectancy until they reach the age of majority (21 under the SECURE Act rules, regardless of state law). Once they turn 21, the 10-year clock starts, meaning they have until age 31 to fully deplete the account.
• Disabled individuals — Must meet the IRS definition of disability under IRC Section 72(m)(7). This is a strict standard requiring a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that is expected to result in death or be of indefinite duration.
• Chronically ill individuals — Must meet the definition under IRC Section 7702B(c)(2), which generally means unable to perform at least two activities of daily living for at least 90 days or requiring substantial supervision due to cognitive impairment.
• Individuals not more than 10 years younger than the deceased — This catches siblings, partners, or friends who are close in age. They can stretch distributions over their own single life expectancy.

Everyone else — adult children, most grandchildren, siblings more than 10 years younger, nieces, nephews, friends, and non-EDB trust beneficiaries — is subject to the 10-year rule. This was the biggest change from the SECURE Act and affects the vast majority of IRA inheritances.

Important: EDB status is determined at the time of the original owner's death and is not retroactive. If you inherit an IRA and are not an EDB at that time, you cannot later become one (except for the minor child exception, which transitions to the 10-year rule at majority).

Missing an RMD triggers one of the steepest penalties in the tax code. Understanding the penalty structure and the correction process is essential for anyone subject to RMDs.

The penalty rate:

• 25% excise tax on the amount you should have withdrawn but didn't. This is down from 50% under pre-SECURE 2.0 rules — still painful, but an improvement.
• Reduced to 10% if you correct the mistake during the "correction window" — generally by the end of the second year following the year the RMD was missed. You must also file an amended tax return if needed.

Example: Your RMD for 2025 is $20,000 and you forget to take it. The penalty is $20,000 x 25% = $5,000. If you catch the error and take the distribution before the end of 2027 (the correction window), the penalty drops to $20,000 x 10% = $2,000.

How to fix a missed RMD:

• Step 1: Take the missed distribution as soon as possible. Withdraw the amount you should have taken.
• Step 2: File IRS Form 5329 (Additional Taxes on Qualified Plans) with your tax return for the year the RMD was missed.
• Step 3: If you are within the correction window, you may qualify for the reduced 10% penalty automatically. If outside the window, you can still request a waiver by attaching a letter of explanation to Form 5329 requesting relief for reasonable cause.

Common reasonable causes: The IRS has historically been lenient when the account owner was seriously ill, received bad advice from a financial institution, or made a good-faith calculation error. However, "I didn't know about the RMD requirement" is generally not considered reasonable cause.

Pro tip: Set up automatic RMD distributions with your IRA custodian. Most major brokerages (Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard) offer automatic annual RMD calculations and distributions that eliminate the risk of forgetting entirely.

If you're subject to the 10-year rule and the original owner died before their required beginning date (so no annual RMDs are required), you have complete flexibility in how you distribute the account — as long as it's fully emptied by the end of year 10. The strategy you choose can have a meaningful impact on your total tax bill.

Strategy 1: Equal annual distributions

Spreading withdrawals evenly over 10 years is the simplest approach and often a good default. It smooths the tax impact and avoids any single year with a huge spike in taxable income.

Strategy 2: Front-load in low-income years

If you expect your income to increase significantly (career growth, inheritance of other assets, Social Security starting), it may make sense to take larger distributions in your lower-income years when you're in a lower marginal tax bracket.

Strategy 3: Delay and take a lump sum in year 10

This maximizes tax-deferred growth but creates a potentially massive taxable event in year 10. This is almost always the worst strategy from a tax perspective because it concentrates all the income into a single year, likely pushing you into the highest brackets. The only scenario where this might work is if you expect to have extremely low income in year 10 (e.g., early retirement gap year).

Strategy 4: Tax bracket optimization

The most sophisticated approach: each year, calculate how much you can withdraw to "fill up" your current tax bracket without spilling into the next one. This requires annual tax planning but can save thousands compared to the other strategies.

Key considerations:

• State taxes matter — Some states have no income tax, and a few offer partial exclusions for retirement income. Factor state taxes into your strategy.
• Medicare IRMAA surcharges — High income from large IRA distributions can trigger Medicare Part B and Part D premium surcharges, adding an effective additional tax rate of $50–$400+ per month.
• Account growth — The inherited IRA continues to grow (or decline) tax-deferred. If the investments are growing, delaying distributions means the year-10 balance will be larger than it would have been with earlier distributions.

Inheriting a Roth IRA is significantly more favorable than inheriting a traditional IRA, but the distribution timeline rules are the same. The key difference is in the tax treatment of the distributions.

What's the same:

• Non-spouse beneficiaries are still subject to the 10-year rule and must fully deplete the account by the end of the 10th year after death.
• EDBs (spouse, minor children, disabled, etc.) can still stretch over their life expectancy.
• Spouses can still roll the Roth IRA into their own Roth IRA.

What's different (and better):

• No annual RMDs required — Even if the original Roth IRA owner was past their RMD age (which doesn't apply to Roth IRAs anyway), beneficiaries never have to take annual RMDs. They just need to empty the account by year 10.
• Distributions are tax-free — Assuming the Roth IRA met the 5-year holding requirement (the original owner's first Roth contribution was at least 5 years before their death), all distributions to beneficiaries are completely free of federal income tax. This means the timing of distributions doesn't matter from a tax perspective.
• No impact on tax brackets or IRMAA — Since Roth distributions are not taxable income, they don't push you into higher tax brackets or trigger Medicare premium surcharges.

The 5-year rule caveat: If the original Roth IRA owner had not held the account for at least 5 tax years before death, the earnings portion of distributions may be taxable (though the contribution basis is always tax-free). The 5-year clock does not reset for the beneficiary — it carries over from the original owner.

Optimal strategy for inherited Roth IRAs: Because distributions are tax-free and there are no annual RMD requirements, the best strategy is usually to let the account grow tax-free for as long as possible and take the entire distribution in year 10. This maximizes the period of tax-free compounding.

The SECURE 2.0 Act, signed into law on December 29, 2022 as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, made dozens of changes to retirement account rules. Here are the most impactful changes related to RMDs and distributions.

Major SECURE 2.0 RMD changes:

• RMD age increased to 73 (then 75) — The RMD starting age moved from 72 to 73 for those born 1951–1959, and will increase to 75 for those born 1960 or later (effective 2033). This gives savers 2–5 more years of tax-deferred growth.
• Penalty reduced from 50% to 25% — The excise tax for missed RMDs dropped from 50% to 25%, and can be further reduced to 10% if corrected within the correction window.
• No more RMDs for Roth 401(k)s — Starting in 2024, Roth accounts in employer plans (401(k), 403(b), 457(b)) are no longer subject to RMDs during the owner's lifetime, matching the treatment of Roth IRAs.
• Surviving spouse election — Starting in 2024, a surviving spouse who inherits an IRA can elect to be treated as the deceased for RMD calculation purposes. This is helpful when the deceased was younger and would have had a longer distribution period.
• Qualified charitable distributions (QCD) indexing — The $100,000 annual QCD limit is now indexed for inflation (it was $105,000 for 2024). QCDs satisfy your RMD and are excluded from taxable income.

Other notable SECURE 2.0 provisions:

• Super catch-up contributions — Ages 60–63 can contribute an additional catch-up amount to 401(k)s (the greater of $10,000 or 150% of the regular catch-up, indexed for inflation).
• 529-to-Roth IRA rollovers — Starting in 2024, beneficiaries of 529 plans can roll over up to $35,000 (lifetime) to a Roth IRA, subject to annual contribution limits and a 15-year holding requirement.
• Emergency savings provisions — New options for penalty-free early withdrawals for emergencies, domestic abuse victims, and those with terminal illness.

The bottom line: SECURE 2.0 generally made RMD rules more favorable for account owners (later start, lower penalties, more Roth flexibility) while maintaining the SECURE Act's 10-year rule for most inherited IRAs. The biggest ongoing area of confusion remains the annual RMD requirement within the 10-year window for inherited IRAs when the original owner died after their required beginning date.

Yes, Roth conversions are one of the most effective strategies for reducing future RMDs. By converting money from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, you pay income tax on the conversion amount now, but the money then grows tax-free in the Roth and is never subject to RMDs during your lifetime.

How it works:

• You move money from your traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. The converted amount is added to your taxable income for the year.
• The converted amount is no longer in the traditional IRA, so it no longer counts toward future RMD calculations.
• The money grows tax-free in the Roth IRA and can be withdrawn tax-free in retirement.

The optimal conversion window: The best time to do Roth conversions is typically between retirement and your RMD start age (the "gap years"). During this period, many people have lower taxable income because they've stopped working but haven't started Social Security or RMDs yet. This creates an opportunity to convert at lower tax brackets.

Important considerations:

• You cannot convert your RMD itself — You must take your RMD for the year first, then convert additional amounts. The RMD amount is not eligible for conversion.
• Conversions are irrevocable — Since 2018 (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), you cannot undo or "recharacterize" a Roth conversion. Once converted, you owe the tax.
• Tax bracket awareness — Convert enough to fill your current tax bracket but be careful not to spill into a much higher bracket. This is where the "bracket stuffing" strategy comes in — converting just enough each year to stay within a target bracket.
• IRMAA impact — Large conversions can trigger Medicare IRMAA surcharges two years later. Factor this into the cost analysis.
• Beneficiary benefit — Converting to Roth is especially valuable if your heirs are in higher tax brackets than you. They'll inherit tax-free distributions instead of taxable ones under the 10-year rule.

A well-executed Roth conversion strategy can save six figures in lifetime taxes across generations. The key is starting early enough to spread conversions over multiple years and avoid a single massive tax hit.

The IRS Uniform Lifetime Table (Table III in IRS Publication 590-B) is the standard table used by most IRA owners to calculate RMDs. It provides a distribution period (also called a "life expectancy factor") for each age from 72 through 120+.

How to use it:

• Step 1: Find your age as of December 31 of the distribution year (not your age at the start of the year).
• Step 2: Look up the corresponding distribution period in the table. For example, age 73 = 26.5, age 80 = 20.2, age 90 = 12.2.
• Step 3: Divide your December 31 prior-year account balance by the distribution period. That's your RMD.

Key distribution periods (2022+ updated table):

• Age 73: 26.5 years
• Age 75: 24.6 years
• Age 80: 20.2 years
• Age 85: 16.0 years
• Age 90: 12.2 years
• Age 95: 8.9 years
• Age 100: 6.4 years

Notice that the distribution period decreases each year. This means the percentage of your account you must withdraw increases with age: roughly 3.8% at age 73, about 5% at 80, about 8.2% at 90, and about 15.6% at 100. The table is designed to spread the account over your remaining expected lifetime.

When NOT to use the Uniform Lifetime Table: If your sole beneficiary is your spouse who is more than 10 years younger, you use the Joint Life and Last Survivor Table instead. This produces a longer distribution period (smaller RMD). Also, beneficiaries of inherited IRAs use the Single Life Expectancy Table, not the Uniform Lifetime Table.

This calculator automatically applies the correct table based on your inputs, so you don't need to look anything up manually.